Book excerpt: This volume offers a comparative approach to the crusade movement on the frontiers of Latin Christendom in the High Middle Ages, bringing a regional focus to research on these peripheral phenomena. It features several key questions: Which military campaigns were propagated as crusades on the peripheries of the Christian West? What efforts were made to gain recognition for them as crusades and what effects did these have? What value did the crusade movement have for societies at the fines christianitatis? What role did the cruciatae have in strengthening pan-Western sense of togetherness and solidarity, and what role did they have for creation of a crusader and frontier identity? The nineteen papers, ranging in scope from the southern and eastern Baltic regions to Iberia, Egypt and the Balkans, provide new insights into the ways in which crusade rhetoric was reflected in the culture and literature of countries involved in crusading beyond the Holy Land.